1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to aircraft and, in particular, to motors used in aircraft. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for managing the health of a motor in an aircraft.
2. Background
Aircraft are assembled from many different parts. Commercial aircraft may have thousands of parts. These parts form systems in aircraft. The systems include flight surface control systems, engines, structural systems, flight entertainment systems, environmental systems, flight control systems, navigation computers, health management systems, and many other types of systems.
With the complexity of aircraft, health management is often performed to identify when maintenance may be needed for the aircraft. With health management, maintenance may be performed when necessary rather than based upon a schedule. With earlier maintenance, the cost of maintaining the aircraft may be reduced as compared to performing maintenance on a schedule that may result in more costly operations being performed on the aircraft. Additionally, health management systems may be used to initiate maintenance prior to a system failure that will cause a schedule interruption.
Health management systems may monitor various conditions during the operation of an aircraft. For example, sensors may be used to monitor temperatures, vibration, force, or other relevant conditions in an aircraft. This information is often sent to a computer in the health management system. The information from the sensors may be saved for later analysis or may be analyzed during the flight of the aircraft.
Currently, the management of motors in the aircraft may not be as accurate as desired. For example, a currently available health management system may not identify a condition that is a precursor of an undesired state of the motor. However, the undesired state of the motor may result in undesired conditions for the aircraft. For example, if a fan does not operate in the environmental system in the aircraft as desired, then the comfort level of the passengers in the cabin may not be as great as desired. Conditions such as motor wear, clogged air vents, wiring issues, out of balance rotation, dirty elements, or other conditions may result in the motor not operating as desired.
Current health management systems also may shut down the use of the motor if undesired vibrations caused from a loss or degradation of bearings in the motor occur or similar vibrations not related to the motor are detected. These vibrations may be detected through accelerometers or other vibration detectors. Currently used health management systems have a technical issue in which the confidence level in which an undesired operating condition is detected is not as high as desired. For example, currently used health management systems may generate false alarms or shut down the motor when the motor is not actually operating in an undesired manner.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues. For example, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that detects when a motor is operating in an undesired condition with a higher level of confidence than currently available with currently used health management systems.